…Yet only capitalism can save the world (I think)

I’ve been thinking a lot after I read it about how humans have been conquered by religion, empire, and especially money. Our religion, that people have no trouble following, is Romantic Consumerism (the need to buy a lot of different things). Real religion requires frequent sermons and reminders to people to behave in a certain way; not so with Romantic Consumerism, we’re good at doing it all on our own.

After reading the book, I came away somewhat depressed by the state of the human species and how I see so much of the downsides of humanity in myself. For example, I personally don’t care about almost anything that doesn’t affect me, at least when it comes to charitable causes. There are plenty of people starving all over the world, but I am an expert in dissociating myself from it and worrying about my first world problems.

Yet capitalism seems to be the great hope of things. We often look back at history and think “Wow, people back in the day would champion science just to advance knowledge.” But it’s not true, even Charles Darwin hitched a ride on the boat to the Galapagos as part of a science+empire expedition. The king of England let him hitch a ride along and that’s where he developed the theory of evolution, but he didn’t get funding for himself. Instead, the English empire was busy building its empire.

So really, capitalism+science work together.

There is no free lunch. I recently read another book, The Rational Optimist, where the author says that trade + capitalism is the basis of nearly all human development. After reading it, I agree that he is right about a lot of things.

This is so because we humans are innately inward-focused, that’s how natural selection designed us (accounting for natural selection, kin selection, and reciprocal altruism).

In a capitalist society, we care about things if they give us value. I’ll buy your shoes with some money, and you take that money and buy some cabbage, and the shopkeeper takes that money and buys my coats that I weave. We don’t care about each other’s wellbeing, but we care that each other provides us something of value.

Altruism just doesn’t scale.

I bring this up because I recently read a left-wing friend of mine post something on Facebook – “You are worth so much more than your productivity.” This is a rebuke of capitalist society that measures people by their output, whereas people instead should have intrinsic worth and not be taken advantage for that reason alone.

I agree with the sentiment, but it’s not how humans work.

The fact is that we don’t care about other people’s plights as much as our own absent of some underlying influence. For example, religion teaches us to care about others; secular humanism teaches us to value others. But those two philosophical systems must be continually nailed into us, day after day, and if they don’t we revert back to our norm of not caring.

But if they sell me something, then suddenly I do care about strangers.

That’s not the way it should be, but it is the way our species works.

So when it comes to conservation projects, such as saving the African Okavango Delta, us westerners can complain that Africa should be preserving it and the animals within it for its own sake. That is crazy talk, it is more worthwhile for the locals to bulldoze whatever land they need so they can raise crops. Instead, only capitalism can help; if tourism vastly increases the amount of return on the Okavango Delta, then people will want to preserve it.

And it’s the same everywhere else. Altruism says you should do good for good’s sake. Capitalism can actually make this a reality by providing a profit and doing good at the same time, such as eco-tourism, or employing poor people in the developing world, or micro-loans that return a profit. That may not be what altruists want to hear, but if given a choice between a capitalism/social good mixture that is sustainable, and pure altruism that is not (in the long term) then I have to pick the former.

If I didn’t get a tax break for making charitable donations, would I do it? Probably not, unfortunately. But is it a good thing that I do it, even though I reap a benefit? Absolutely yes!

So maybe the capitalists have it right after all. While I don’t agree that capitalism is in itself a moral good, I do think that a product or service that generates a sustained profit which also serves an underlying social good will work better in the long term (e.g., me buying dark chocolate that goes to protect endangered species).

It’s entirely possible that I am tricking myself with regards to this, but I hope I am not.